I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Friday, March 2, 2012

Duck season!

That means it's time for me to talk about who I am endorsing for the top seven seats among non-CSM6 incumbents. I've already talked about who I'd endorse among the incumbents. These aren't necessarily who I think will be elected. These are who I want to be elected to those top seven seats. I'll write an additional post later on who I think will be elected and why.

Hans Jagerblitzen is an extremely impressive candidate to me. He was already way ahead on points simply because he apparently took the initiative with CSM6 to push a lot of his ideas regarding faction warfare to them. And to their credit, they listened. When the CSM came to the December Summit and the topic turned to faction warfare, it's my understanding that Hans's ideas and thoughts were the bulk of the CSM's contributions. With faction warfare set to be a major factor in the summer expansion, Inferno, FW players need a strong representative in the top seven seats to represent them. Hans is that candidate. He reminds me strongly of Two Step with his outspokenness and enthusiasm, and I feel confident that he'll bring a lot of experience, hard work, and communication to the job.

Leboe is Rote Kapelle's candidate for the CSM this year, and he has my endorsement, and will be receiving one of my votes. I'm sure it's tempting to dismiss this endorsement in terms of "Sure, Jester, you have to endorse your alliance-mate. Whatever." Yep, guilty as charged. But let's move past that for a minute. The simple fact is that there are few or no CSM7 candidates who will be strong representatives for how I play EVE. I have been a small alliance, small-gang PvPer for my entire EVE career. It should be possible for small gangs to play this game in an instant-on, "World of Tanks"-like way. It should be possible for small alliances to thrive in sov space without being beholden to huge, rich blobs. NPC 0.0 and low-sec should continue to be a relatively safe havens from sov-blob means of playing EVE, and it's threatening to come to a sudden end. Leboe understands these factors and actually plays the game this way, as I do. They're the same things I would have pushed had I run for CSM7 myself. I don't feel like any of the current members of CSM6 can make the same claim. Leboe is probably also one of the foremost experts on the production of boosters in EVE Online, an element of play that's going to be very important this year. For these reasons, he gets my endorsement and my vote.

Kelduum Revaan is arguably one of only two or three candidates running for CSM7 who lives full-time in high-sec. For that reason alone he'd deserve some consideration. Are his ideas about war-dec mechanics kind of silly? Yes indeed. But his strong position in EVE University and his experience with dealing with newer players are going to be of critical importance this year. It's one of the biggest ironies of CSM6 that the player in that group that has the most experience with the EVE New Player Experience is The Mittani. And Mittens has already shown that he prefers pushing new players in a direction that favors sov-blob play. Kelduum could go a long way toward balancing that, and telling CCP how the war-dec mechanics and any NPE changes implemented in Inferno actually play out in the field. Compared to this, a few silly ideas more or less aren't that important. Pretty much every CSM candidate starts with a few. ;-)

Which brings me to who I'm not endorsing out of the 15. I'm not going to talk about everyone, but I do want to mention a few of the stronger ones...

I'm not endorsing riverini. Now, as I've already said today, I respect riverini's work a great deal. You can scoff and mock him all you like, but the fact is that riv's got the most successful EVE news website out there, and that's not likely to change in 2012. He's proven that he has the organizational experience and the background to be an important contribution to the EVE community. He's also in touch through back channels with three-quarters of the large player groups in EVE and would be in a terrific position to help the CSM with their own communications, which have been poor to say the least. In short, he'd bring a lot of strengths to the group. That said, he'd bring some weaknesses, too. I've told him this already, but he gets too focused on specifics in a role where having a view of the big picture is far more valuable. He also gets a little bit too focused -- and sometimes rather emotional -- on his own ideas at the expense of those of others. I respect riverini, but he's not someone I'm endorsing this time around.

Even though I have a ton of respect for him, I'm not endorsing Blake Armitage. He'd be a fantastic representative for industry-based players but the fact is that industry is not going to be a big focus this year. I'm hoping that CCP turns their attention to industry topics in 2013, and it's entirely possible that I'll endorse him for CSM8 should he choose to run. But for this year, there are other candidates that can address those few industry topics that are likely to come up. And industry-minded voters are likely to give their votes to Meissa in any case. Blake is quite strong on wormhole topics as well, but Two Step is stronger.

I'm not endorsing Alekseyev Karrde. Alek is a terrific candidate in terms of his knowledge of war-decs and mercenary play. There's no doubt that these are valuable topics, and there's no doubt that I like Alek's view of the war-dec mechanics more than I do Kelduum's. Still, I don't feel like Alek brings a broad base of experience or a broad view of EVE topics that would be necessary for a successful top seven CSM member. He's too focused on a small number of topics. Kelduum is stronger on the NPE and working with new players; Leboe is stronger in industry and on living in NPC 0.0. Do I hope Alek wins an alternate seat? Absolutely! And in that position, he can bring his ideas to the table and make himself heard. But a top seven seat? No, not this time.

I'm not endorsing Mike Azariah, even though he's probably the strongest role-playing candidate and the strongest Incursion candidate. Still, I hope he gets an alternate seat this year. I think it's about the right time.

So that's it. In my rough order of preference, my endorsement for the top seven seats are:

Two Step

Trebor Daehdoow

Hans Jagerblitzen

The Mittani

Leboe

UAxDEATH

Kelduum Revaan

...and Two Step, Trebor, and Leboe will be getting my votes.

Do I think these will be the seven that actually win? Some of them, certainly. All? No. ;-) I'll have my predictions for who I think will actually win the 14 seats next week.

As far as I'm concerned, high-sec bear-style play is a perfectly valid way to play EVE. A bunch of us would have to suffer through much more expensive PvP if it wasn't for those bears. I support them fully.

There's a whole class of EVE players that have no interest in anything that happens beyond the low-sec gates. They just want to play casually. And they should be represented on the CSM as something other than "prey". Kelduum can and should do that.

Frankly, the most important thing that E-Uni contributes to the New Player Experience is introducing them to the game's *community*. We all know that Eve is huge, and that you don't really get to know what the game has to offer unless you find a group of friends to do it with. E-Uni is a collaboration of over 1000 pilots, all of whom are there to help each other get to know the game.

E-Uni is not an elite anything. It's a safe landing spot to show people a lot of what the game has to offer, and then send them on their way. The fundamental expectation and hope of E-Uni is that most people will out-grow the corporation, and move on.

As for "doesn't contribute positively to the PvP aspects of the game", there's a heck of a lot of PvP pilots out there who are proudly E-Uni graduates, and many PvP corps who actively recruit from E-Uni. Is this because E-Uni creates elite PvPers? No way! It's because there's a continual stream of pilots who are comfortable with the game, have decided PvP is for them, understand the basics of flying a PvP ship, and are now ready to take the next step. *That* is what E-Uni contributes to small fleet PvP, large fleet PvP, wormholes, industry, missioning, corp management, and several other specialisations.

The attitude that E-Uni is fail because pilots coming out of prep-school have not yet reached the level of those who've done in day-in, day-out for years misses the point of E-Uni.

How shortsighted. E-Uni does more for new player retention than anything I know. They provide needed help with the learning cliff, teach the basics of everything from orbiting to comms, and answer that BIG new player question "How can I compete with these decade old players if I can never catch up?" Those 100 person frig roams introduce players to the mechanics of flying, demonstrate the advantages of corps, and dispells the notion that new players cannot contribute without 10's of millions of skillpoints. And aside from cheap tackle and ewar, what would you suggest a week old toon fly that can contribute to a fleet? As members skill up, there are classes for all kinds of PVP.

I don't like when E-Uni gets involved in politics, but in my concern for EVE's need to retain new players, I recognize that E-Uni does far far more good than bad. I would not be playing were it not for E-Uni. I give their candidate half my votes in recognition of their ongoing valuable contributions to the game.

But for CSM6, it wasn't necessary for a post to get likes in order for a nominee to be considered. This year they are required, so a lot of the more active players are liking their favoured candidate in order to ensure that they get the nomination.

My hope is that every EVE Online player should vote. My further hope with my endorsements is that you'll read through them, along with the endorsements of other bloggers or writers that you trust, maybe listen to an interview or three, and come to a (hopefully) informed decision.

The future of the planet is not dependent on these elections; voting is good but no choice you make will have catastrophic effects so why sweat it just because you're a new player? Invest whatever time you think is worth it to learn about candidates and then choose one that appeals to you FOR WHATEVER REASON. That reason only has to make sense to you.

FW and small gang would be my preference. Although I am limited on time right nowand am going to try RvB since coming back after the Summer of Rage.

Being able to jump in to small interesting fights quickly WoT style is a very exciting prospect.

I'd also like to see a more streamlined process for completely fitting a ship. Instead of buying each individual item, would be nice to click a button and have it give a total price for the fit and one button to buy and fit it (Being a software dev, I could see that being a nightmare performance wise ;)

Thank you, Jester, for the kind words. I do however need to take a moment and clarify a few things. I hope you don't mind.

First, the ideas brought to the council were not all my own. They were the culmination of months of talks with members of the four militias, I left out both the highly controversial changes, and the ones that I personally wanted but realized were out of step with the community's demands. I cannot in good conscience call them "my ideas" when the community deserves just as much credit for putting their differences aside and working together.

The package I brought before the council was the sum total of what we felt should be tried FIRST, before CCP trudged into an elaborate overhaul that if implemented poorly carries a real risk of dropped subscriptions. I've been trying to encourage them not to waste resources by jumping blindly into the FW expansion, as of today I still have zero evidence they've been listening.

I also want to be sure that everyone understands my contributions were NOT the bulk of the discussion at the meeting. I was enormously disappointed to find out that the fruit of all my efforts was a singular line of text in the CSM summit notes - "The CSM presented a list of smaller issues that were raised by the FW community". That's it. Everything else you read regarding Sov mechanics, interjecting drama, elected leadership, lowering low sec risk through FW-upgraded systems - all that nonsense has absolutely NOTHING to do with anything the community itself has been talking about, asking for, or what I was saying to the CSM. I appreciate that the CSM6 members forwarded my suggestions as promised, but was dismayed that the suggestions themselves were not the topic of discussion.

We clearly have more iterating work to do not not just on the game, but also on the player/CCP/CSM relationship itself. We absolutely need to continue expanding and strengthening communication in BOTH directions between the players and the developers.

I can't help but feel like the whole eve csm voting happens the same way as the process depicted in the movie "gangs of new York" . A few major power blocs forcing as many people as possible through threats and brute force to vote for the candidates. Especially in the case of the mittani and eve university, they have I think the largest number of new players that they point in the direction of voting machine and telling them which name is the good one, much like the newly arrived Irish population in the movie.

I like leboe as a candidate, and fully agree with the fact that NPC small gang warfare is important and needs a voice. However, you have often criticized that Mittens is simply advocating his own playstyle. Is that not exactly what leboe is doing? He states that he loves small gang warfare and manufactures boosters, which is what he plans on representing in the CSM.

You state in this post about Alekseyev Karrde, "Still, I don't feel like Alek brings a broad base of experience or a broad view of EVE topics that would be necessary for a successful top seven CSM member. He's too focused on a small number of topics. " That sounds surprisingly like leboe.

That being said, I do agree with you about small gang pvp needing to be represented, and really think that eve needs an instant on pvp to be more appealing.

Also, re-reading this, I'd like to say I'm not a goon or even a mittani supporter in the slightest, if that may've been implied (the goons do have quite the propaganda machine, after all)

With the previous talk about diluting votes, don't you think it's a bit silly to be diluting your personal vote between several candidates. Endorsements I can understand giving to several different people.

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